The Story of Mohamed Amin

by Brian Tetley

  In 1962, the Indian Secondary School changed its name to Azania Secondary School. Henceforth, all Dar es Salaam’s children would begin life with equal education, for 1961 had closed with Nyerere’s cherished dreams of independence fulfilled. Colonialism was abolished at midnight on December 8, 1961.

  His cameras were among the hundreds that exploded in thousands of flashes when the flag of the new nation was hauled up the flagpole to replace the Union Jack. The pictures appeared in Drum and newspapers throughout East and Central Africa. For the first time, too, his work and name went around the world. He had covered the celebrations for The Associated Press, beginning a relationship that continues unbroken.

  He was now 18 and a senior schoolboy, and the annual report of the school Photographic Society noted:

  Photography proved a paying hobby for many, and only a few members depended on their parents for recurrent expenses. Some earned a guinea or two, now and then, by sending a photograph to some local newspaper or foreign magazine.

  He had no doubt about his choice of career, just as he was sure he would never be anyone else’s employee. He had taken his first and only photographic job when he was just sixteen after an advertisement in a Dar es Salaam newspaper had caught his eye: ‘Photographer wanted’. He applied with a portfolio of his published work.

  The man who answered his letter was Tony Dunn of the Aga Khan’s Nation group who, 25 years later, as London correspondent of the Nation, would profile Mo’s year of success, 1985. Working hours were from nine to twelve and two to five but he did not disclose the fact that he was still a schoolboy. He was offered the job.

  ‘I worked out that I could report in for roll call and the first school period which was at eight and then leave for work at nine and return to take the last period. Being a prefect helped, since I was hardly going to report myself. I was missing but it wasn’t that blatant—although the teachers must have wondered why I was out of class so much.’

  The interruption in his academic career was not long. The Nation office in Dar es Salaam was minuscule and the darkroom even smaller—the office toilet. His system was to carry the chemical trays and a red light into the toilet when it was vacant. ‘We stood the enlarger on the seat,’ he remembers. ‘The only really bad thing was the lack of fresh air.’ Anybody in desperate need had to dash out of the office to find another toilet.

  Saturday morning work was mandatory but developing was usually done on the Monday after. One Saturday, however, Dunn was insistent that Mo go along to photograph some workmen digging holes in the capital’s main road, close to the famous Askari monument to the dead and fallen of two world wars.

  ‘They were installing cables and I thought to myself, “There’s not much of a story—or picture—in this,”‘ he recalls. Dunn told him to process the film and make some prints. The accountant, who doled out the printing paper against a stock sheet wherever it was requested, was not on duty. ‘I asked him if it was important. Dunn said yes it was and I said I could borrow three or four pieces of printing paper from a friend, Sheny, and return it on Monday.’ His friend ran a photographic shop and studio.

  Next day, he went through the Nation. None of his pictures had been used. His anger mounted. He was convinced the whole exercise had been deliberate. On the Monday, he asked Dunn if there had been any intention of using the material. Dunn told him no.

  ‘I still don’t know what he was trying to prove, but I had no doubts about what to do.’

  He went to his desk, cleared away his papers, returned to Dunn’s office, threw the office keys on the desk and told him, ‘Stuff your job.’ He never collected the only pay packet for which he ever worked.

  In December 1962, in the middle of his school exams, he quit. ‘I remember,’ he says, ‘that I decided in the middle of the exams that there was no point going through the exams because, however well or not so well I did, I’d just get a piece of paper from the school which I didn’t need. Because this was when Tanganyika was going through the transition—it was all happening at that time.

  ‘A good photographer doesn’t need to go to a college to learn photography. I believe that if you are interested in photography, you teach yourself. It’s a question of trial and error. The more you practise in the field, the better you will be. Some of the best photographers around have had no formal photographic training. In fact, I think that to some extent, those who go to colleges to learn photography are never really as good as those who have taught themselves. Because they have learned at school, they go very much by the theories: it’s all chemistry and physics and that’s just very complicated; it doesn’t work practically in the field.

  ‘For example, if I told a college-trained photographer how we sometimes process our film, he would be horrified because occasionally we process film in paper developer to gain time. That’s because very often, you are racing against time, and speed is essential.

  ‘I wanted to make my mark covering what was a major story. So I left school. And I still feel it was the right decision. I would have wasted four or five years of my life going to college, and I may not have had the same opportunities.’

  And, recalling his one and only job, he vowed that he would always be his own master. Indeed, he had already decided the name of the company he would form.

  2. Isle of Blood

  NEVER IN HISTORY HAS ONE continent experienced such a decade of turmoil, turbulence, and transition as Africa in the 1960s. Almost everywhere, the old order was swept away—in some cases to be replaced by new and unaccustomed freedoms, elsewhere by systems more authoritarian than those they displaced.

  In time, many of the new leaders would come to know the young man who spent the evening of March 24, 1963 in Dar es Salaam filling in business registration Form 5 (Section 14), issued by the office of the Registrar-General of Tanganyika. The name he put down for the fledgling company was Minipix of Post Office Box 20345, Dar es Salaam, telephone 20953.

  He already had a studio. One of his friends, Aziz Khaki, had offered to rent him half of his shop. It was a simple one-storey affair of block and mortar with a corrugated iron roof. Steel shutters were drawn across it at night for security. There was a reception area for customers, a darkroom, and a small studio for portrait work.

  Aziz’s sister, Dolly, was a radiant and striking raven-haired model. The young photographer and she knew each other. He had met her in 1962 when he covered a fashion show in which she was taking part. The dresses she wore were her own designs.

  Dolly ran a fashion shop just behind the Ismaili Mosque off the capital’s Independence Avenue, and she and Mohamed Amin became friends. Their affair began, he says, in the darkroom. ‘I kissed her while I was printing her pictures. She used to visit me because she wanted to know how you developed pictures.’

  What really developed was a lifelong love affair. Though he was from an orthodox Muslim family, he had already made up his mind to marry Dolly, who was an Ismaili, one of the Aga Khan’s followers. For herself, she had thoughts of no one else but the wavy-haired teenager with the steely resolve and almost hypnotic personality.

  There was another reason for his anxiety to get to work at once. Besides his older brother Iqbal, he had three younger brothers: Manir, born eight years after him, Alim, 10 years after him, and Hanif, 15 years younger. He also had three sisters: Sugra, Sagira, and Nazira. Home life was good. His mother, Azmat, made sure they were well fed, clothed, and happy. But money was limited and, in 1963, in the wake of independence, his father was anticipating retirement. At 53, his thoughts were turning more and more towards his homeland, which had been partitioned during his time in East Africa. His birthplace, Jullundur, now lay well inside India’s share of the Punjab following the 1947 partition, and Sardar Mohamed was thinking of moving to that part which now lay within Islamic Pakistan. He intended that his family should return with him. Amin did not intend to go and needed to be assured of his independence.

  Iqbal, who had been training with the East African Posts and T
elecommunications Corporation in Kenya, was one of a handful of Asians and Europeans hastily recruited before Independence to provide the newly free nation with skilled personnel. He wanted to continue his studies in Britain and flew there on December 24, 1963.

  His brother, too, had made up his mind. He was sure his future lay in Africa and this thought was uppermost in his mind as he completed the registration form.

  Next morning, however, as he walked to the Registrar-General’s office, he was still not satisfied with the name he had chosen. ‘Mini’ suggested something small, which did not suit this ambitious youngster.

  Obviously, his business must start small but it need not remain so. Pausing, he withdrew the form from the envelope and with his pen crossed out the ‘Mini’. Above, in neat block letters, he wrote ‘Camera’. Minutes later, he bounced up the steps of the Registrar-General’s office and pushed the form across the counter with the 20 shillings registration fee. Thus Camerapix was born.

  The sign the teenager hung above his studio when the company opened for its first day of business read:

  CAMERAPIX

  STUDIO, PRESS, AND COMMERCIAL PHOTOGRAPHERS

  One service offered was the processing of black and white film at a shilling a roll. He had calculated this would cover the cost of chemicals, equipment, and his time in the darkroom.

  Indeed, his very first customer, a young African, handed him a roll of black and white film. But when Mo developed it, the negatives were blank, although the frame numbers confirmed there was nothing wrong with the processing. With a shrug of his shoulders, he realised that whatever explanation he gave would be met with disbelief. He was right. The customer gazed at him with the look of one convinced he was dealing with a charlatan. ‘He didn’t believe a word I said. It was obvious he thought that I had developed his roll wrongly.’ The customer refused to pay and although the shop had only been open for two hours, young Amin locked it up and took the board back to the sign writer.

  Back in position an hour later, it read simply:

  CAMERAPIX

  Press Photographers Only

  As a matter of routine, right from the beginning, Mohamed Amin worked a 14- to 15-hour-day and a seven-day week, developing relationships with clients, and everyday learning something new about the fascinating, unpredictable world of news.

  ‘I just worked. I used to come to the office in the morning and clean it all. I used to beat the carpets without any shame at all. I didn’t give a damn who saw me do it. Then I spent the day taking pictures and writing captions and sending them to various newspapers.’

  He is almost pathological about work. Even in the 1980s, waking early and unable to get back to sleep, he gets dressed and goes to his office sometimes as early as four a.m.

  ‘I think, subconsciously to a degree, that God has given me life and it’s not a life that I want to spend lying on the beach. You must achieve something with your life. It’s not to waste. And I just feel that I don’t need to rest any more than I have to rest in this life. I can rest later when I’m dead. Then, nobody’s going to bother me.’

  In the meantime, from those very early years, driven by a relentless sense of destiny, he has bothered many who labour in his shadows, caught up in his work compulsion to the point of exhaustion. ‘There were a number of times that I actually slept in the office. I didn’t have to sleep in the office. I could have gone home. But I just wanted to work. In my early years, half the time in any month, I think I actually spent the night in the office. I just slept on the table. I would work for as long as I could and then clear the table and sleep on it for three or four hours, wake up at two, or three in the morning, and go on again. I just enjoyed working.’

  His energy soon paid off. The established freelancers in Dar es Salaam were not at all pleased by the success of this brash young upstart. But just how intensely they resented him he had no idea until the day he sought advice from one of the capital’s veteran photojournalists.

  Amin had bought a flash and wanted to know in which position he should set the switch on his camera body for electronic use. His poker-faced rival pointed out the wrong position. The result was a disaster, every picture an unusable half frame.

  ‘At that moment,’ he recalls, ‘I figured—never trust anybody. And always check and double-check.’ It is a rule he stands by almost religiously—sometimes to the irritation of all involved—but it undoubtedly accounts for his achievements where others, less exacting, fail to deliver.

  ‘I felt really let down and very bitter at being deliberately misled. In fact, when I confronted the photographer later, he agreed that he had done it because I was competing with him and he had been working at the job for years.

  ‘It was a very nasty thing to do and I promised myself that if ever any photographers came to me for any advice, I would never mislead them but go out of my way to try to help them and point them in the right direction. This is something I have conscientiously done ever since—even with my direct competitors. I’ve always tried to help in whatever way I can, always bearing in mind what happened to me. I must never let that happen to anyone looking for advice from me.’

  Former CBS cameraman Abdul Qayum Isaq, who now runs a television production outfit, was a callow photographer with one of Mohamed Amin’s rivals for some time. ‘I really wanted to be a cameraman but nobody was interested in giving me the experience or teaching me.’

  Then he went to Amin, who spent long hours passing on his experience to the enthusiastic youngster. Soon, Qayum’s film work began to earn plaudits from the Visnews editors and other organisations.

  But, like so many, Qayum found Amin’s pace too hot. ‘He’s impossible to work for,’ he says. ‘He never stops—and he expects everybody else to continue at the same incredible pace. I wanted to stay alive so I quit. But he taught me everything I know.’

  If the young Amin had rivals, he also had friends. He soon acquired official accreditation from the Tanganyika Government. His press card, approved by one of President Nyerere’s top aides, Colonel Hesham Mbita, who had taken a liking to the tireless youngster, gave him the right to move to the front of the crowd at state functions and other events without being hassled by security—or rival photographers—and put him shoulder to shoulder with the old guard.

  He learned quickly that any official-looking piece of paper could be a passport to closed places and an asset in dealing with stubborn or bullying officialdom. Years later, he lent his Diners Club credit card to a Newsweek correspondent who showed it to the security guards at Mombasa’s Kilindini Port and was admitted without question.

  At this stage, however, Amin knew nothing of cinefilm or television and it’s unlikely he ever would have taken much interest but for talk he overheard about the money to be earned from the television networks. He gave it little thought, however, until he received a ‘tip-off’ on a strong story.

  Two liberal white South Africans, imprisoned for their opposition to the apartheid regime, had broken jail in Pretoria and stolen a Cessna as their getaway plane to fly to Dar es Salaam. Nyerere’s Tanganyika had become a well-known haven for those opposed to colonialism, racism, and apartheid.

  He hurried to his friend Sheny, who had a 16millimetre, hand-cranked, clockwork Bolex, which shot silent film. Each take of the 100-foot reel was limited to a little over half-a-minute (around 20 feet), after which the motor had to be wound up again. Compared with later cameras, it was a serious limitation—though it forced a generation of news cameramen, including young Mohamed Amin, to shoot really tight stories, and to make every ‘take’ count.

  Sheny opened the Bolex and wound the reel in place before handing the camera to Amin who, with hasty thanks, hurried out to the second-hand Volkswagen he had acquired.

  At the airport, he prepared his still cameras, hung the Bolex over one shoulder and, waving his press pass, sauntered casually through the security to the parking apron waiting for the Cessna to taxi in.

  He had never used a cine camera before,
so he spent the first few minutes shooting stills before asking the two tired runaways if they would cooperate a little longer while he shot a news film for British television. On the way back to his studio, he called in at Sheny’s to return the Bolex and to ask him to unload the film. Then, as he processed and printed his stills and filed his story for the local East African press, and Drum and AP, who, he knew, would certainly want the pictures, he pushed it out of his mind. When he did remember, he realised he had no idea who would use it, or even where to send it.

  A contact in the British High Commission in Dar es Salaam gave him the London headquarters addresses of the BBC, the British Commonwealth International Newsfilm Agency (BCINA)—the original name for Visnews—and ITN together with the advice, ‘I hear ITN pays best.’

  It was all he needed to know. Compiling a ‘dope’ sheet listing each take on the reel, together with background notes and a cutting from the Tanganyika Standard which had used his story, he air-freighted the package with charges collect.

  Speculative offerings from unknowns, addressed simply to ‘The Editor,’ rarely get used. His first news film, however, was shown on ITN’s peak-time bulletin. Fast asleep at the time, he only learned of his success two days later, when he opened a cable from ITN Editor Geoffrey Cox. It was a milestone in his career; though more significant to him was ITN’s cheque for £25—substantially more than he got from sales of the same story to the press.

  With the right equipment and contacts, he calculated, he could more than double his money on any story he covered by combining news film coverage with stills. After this first success, he was rarely without Sheny’s Bolex on his stills assignments. It became so much a part of him that he came to be known as ‘Six Camera Mo’, the man with a necklace of still and cine cameras draped across his shoulders. Soon, for the way he managed to meet the requirements of rival newspapers and television stations with just one pair of eyes, he became something of a legend.